William Joseph Hammer

Background

William Joseph Hammer was born on February 26, 1858 at Cressona, Pennsylvania. He was the second son and fourth child of William Alexander Hammer and his first wife, Martha Augusta Beck.

Education

Hammer was educated at public and private schools in Newark, New Jersey, and attended the University of Berlin and the Technische Hochschule in Berlin.

Career

In 1878 Hammer began his electrical career with Edward Weston in the Weston Malleable Nickel Company at Newark, New Jersey, and on December 1, 1879, became an assistant to Thomas A. Edison at the laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where for a long time he had charge of the tests and records on incandescent lamps. In 1880 he became chief electrician of the first Edison Lamp Works at Menlo Park and the year following he was made chief engineer of the English Edison Company.

Working with Edward H. Johnson, Edison's representative in Europe, he built the first central station for incandescent electric lighting in the world. It was constructed at Holborn Viaduct, London, and was put into operation early in 1882. In the same year he installed the plant using twelve Edison dynamos at the Crystal Palace Electric Exposition. Transferred to Germany in 1883, he became chief engineer of the German Edison Company (later known as the Allgemeine Elektricitiats Gesellschaft) and installed many plants throughout the country. At the Berlin Health Exposition of that year, he exhibited an automatic motor-driven flashing electric lamp sign, which he had invented.

He returned to the United States in 1884 and for the next two years he was chief inspector of central stations of the Edison Company. In 1886 he became chief engineer and general manager of the Boston Edison Company. In 1889 he was Edison's personal representative at the Paris Exposition. From 1890 until his death Hammer carried on a consulting practice and maintained offices in New York City.

Among his important achievements were the installation of the eight-thousand-light plant of the Ponce de Leon Hotel at St. Augustine, Florida, the largest private plant in the world at that time, the reconstruction of the Jacksonville Edison plant, which had been struck by lightning, and the installation of the electrical effects at the Cincinnati Exposition in 1888.

Upon the entrance of the United States into the First World War he was commissioned major on the General Staff of the army. He was assigned to the inventions section of the war plans division and later served in the operations division of the Army War College at Washington.

Greatly interested in the uses of radium, he published a work on the subject entitled Radium and Other Radioactive Substances (1903). He was also enthusiastic about aviation. He was one of the editors of Navigating the Air (1907), issued by the Aero Club of America, and in collaboration with Hudson Maxim published Chronology of Aviation.

He died of pneumonia in New York City in his seventy-seventh year.

Achievements

• William Joseph Hammer went down in history as a pioneer in electrical engineering and aviator during World War I. He will perhaps be best remembered for his collection and preservation of more than two thousand different types of incandescent lamps showing the development of the lamp industry from its beginning to well into the nineteenth century. The collection contains one of the Philadelphia Exposition lamps of 1884 on which the "Edison effect" was observed, the forerunner of the three-electrode tubes of wireless telegraphy. For this work he received the citation of chevalier of the Legion of Honor from the government of France in 1925. He was also the recipient of several scientific honors, including the Elliott Cresson gold medal and the John Scott medal and premium.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Radium, and other radio-active substances: polonium, actinium, and thorium. With a consideration of phosphorescent and fluorescent substances, the ... of disease by the ultra-violet light

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • The William J. Hammer collection of incandescent electric lamps

Membership

Hammer was a fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and served the society as vice-president, 1891-1893, and manager, 1893-1896. He was president of the Edison Pioneers, 1920, and a member of many other technical and civic organizations.

Connections

On January 3, 1894, Hammer married Alice Maud White, the daughter of Thomas White of Cleveland, Ohio. They had one daughter, Mabel.

Father:

William Alexander Hammer

Mother:

Martha Ann (Beck) Hammer

Spouse:

Maude W (White) Hammer

Sister:

Martha Virginia Hammer

Sister:

Elizabeth A (Hammer) Troutman

Daughter:

Mabel Hammer

References

• Edison - The Man And His Work
• The Compendium of American Genealogy: First Families of America. A Genealogical Encyclopedia of the United Statse. In Seven Volumes. Volume IV (1930)
• Times Square Spectacular: Lighting Up Broadway
• WHOS WHO IN AMERICA 1932-1933 (TWO YEARS)